Motorola’s Edge series of phones has been known to offer flagship-like features at a mid-range price point. The new Motorola Edge 50 Pro is sticking to that formula, but this time, the phone is packed with some features that you won’t find on other smartphones. I’ve unboxed a lot of phones in the past few months, but unboxing the Edge 50 Pro left me really impressed. It’s got the looks and feel of a premium flagship but not the price tag. The phone starts at Rs. 31,999, which is great value for money. Here’s a quick first look at the latest Edge series phone from Motorola before our full review.
I’ve been using the Motorola Edge 50 Pro for a couple of days and it’s been mostly all good. The design is eye-catching, and the phone looks good from all angles. It comes with a curved display with slim and uniform bezels on the front. The phone uses an aluminium frame and has a leather finish rear panel. You get a 6.7-inch pOLED curved display on the front, which Motorola claims is the World’s first Pantone Validated display. The panel offers 1.5K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, 2,000 nits peak brightness, DCI-P3 colour gamut, and 10-bit colours. In the few days I’ve had with the phone, the screen has been really great, especially for watching content. The phone also gets an in-display fingerprint scanner and a hole punch cutout for the selfie camera.
The display offers a 144Hz refresh rate
Our review unit came in the Luxe Lavender colour option, and it definitely stands out from the rest. The leather finish feels quite premium and is soft to the touch. The phone is also available in a Black Beauty colour option that uses the same silicone vegan leather finish. And finally, there’s a Moon Light Pearl colour that uses a special Acetate finish and is claimed to be handcrafted in Italy.
The phone feels great to hold
Moving on to the back of the Edge 50 Pro, you get a triple camera setup with a 50-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.4 aperture that’s claimed to be the segment’s widest. It also gets optical image stabilisation. There’s a 10-megapixel telephoto unit with 3x optical zoom support and a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera that also supports macro photography. On the front, you get a 50-megapixel selfie camera with autofocus. The main rear camera takes good photos, and so does the telephoto camera. Again, the entire camera setup is said to be Pantone Validate for real-world colours and authentic skin tones, but I found the photos to be slightly oversaturated. The camera system is also said to get some AI treatment to improve performance. We’ll test all that out in our full review.
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro offers dual 5G connectivity, a USB Type-C port with USB 3.1 speeds, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support. There’s also Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, along with support for all the usable GPS satellites. You get an IP68 dust and water resistance rating as well. The phone has the volume and power buttons on the right edge and the SIM tray at the bottom.
The phone gets a 50-megapixel selfie camera with autofocus
Internally, the new Motorola phone is equipped with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC that’s paired with up to 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. I did not face any lag and everything was smooth in the few days I used the phone. However, we’ll be running some benchmarks and games on the phone to see how it performs under heavy usage. One thing I did notice during the initial few days with the phone was that it does heat up quite a bit when charging using the 125W fast charger. But then again, it is summertime, and the heat is only rising.
Motorola is bringing the all-new Hello UI to the Edge 50 Pro. The phone runs Android 14 out-of-the-box with pretty much no bloatware. You get an almost stock Android experience with Motorola promising 3 years of OS and 4 years of security updates.
The Edge 50 Pro comes with near-stock Android 14
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro comes with a 4,500mAh battery, and the 12GB RAM variant, which we’re reviewing, gets a 125W TurboCharger in the box. The 8GB RAM variant will get a slower 68W charger. The phone charges super fast with the 125W charger, and you also get 50W wireless charging support.
At a starting price of Rs. 31,999, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro seems like an easy recommendation. However, we suggest waiting for our full review to decide whether to go for the new Edge 50 Pro or choose one of its alternatives, such as the recently launched Nothing Phone 2a (Review).